Roundabout 5.29.18

Posted May 31, 2018

We will meet the man who came out of retirement to head up Indiana’s fight against the opioid epidemic when we meet on Tuesday, June 5, at noon in the Frangipani Room of the IMU. Jim McClelland is the state’s executive director for drug prevention, treatment, and enforcement. The first person to hold the position Gov. Holcomb created in January 2017, he reports directly to the governor. In 2015 Jim concluded a 45-year career with Goodwill Industries, the last 41 of them as president and CEO of Goodwill Industries of Central Indiana.

THIS WEEK’S NEWS

Rotary Selects Aubrey Seader for Global Scholarship

In photo : President Mike Baker, Aubrey, and two club members who serve on the district scholarship committee, Kim Gray and Jim Bright.

Rotary’s Southern Indiana District has selected Aubrey Seader of Bloomington for a $40,000 Rotary Global Grant Scholarship to help her pursue a master’s degree in arts and cultural administration at King’s College London.

After receiving an undergraduate degree from Rutgers in 2015, Aubrey has used storytelling and theater to build bridges of understanding between people of different cultures. Through “The Hijabi Diaries,” a podcast that shares stories of Muslim-American women, she has tackled the issue of Islamophobia. She also has used storytelling to tackle ecology and women’s issues.

In addition to her theater studies, Aubrey will take courses in conflict resolution, diplomacy, and international relations. The Rotary Club of Hatfield (U.K.) will be her host club. Aubrey is the district’s first global scholar.

We need runners! If you or a friend is a runner, sign up today for the annual Race for Literacy, which benefits Teachers Warehouse. The 5K race will be Saturday morning, June 9. Race monitors are still needed, says Ashley Sullivan. She promises, “We will have donuts. We will have coffee. We will have lots of fun.” Here is the link to register: https://mag7raceseries.com/?event=rotary-race-for-literacy-5k-run-walk. Questions? Ask Ashley at asullivan@cipbloomington.org or (765) 618-6803.

Hats Off to Alain Barker

At the May 29 meeting Secretary Earon Davis saluted Alain Baker and everyone associated with the spectacular Early Music Festival, which ended Sunday.

Register for Family Fun Night

On Tuesday, June 12, Family Fun Night at WonderLab will replace our regular noon meeting. Cost for adults and teens is $11, but children 12 and under are free. There will be a variety of pizzas from Pizza X, along with soda, lemonade, and water. You can park on the street and pay the meters or at the Convention Center parking lot, which is free. The event is from 6 to 8 p.m. Questions? Ask Glenda Murray, glmurray@indiana.edu or (812) 332-6268. Deadline for replying by way of SurveyMonkey is Friday, June 8.

Introducing Natalie, Our Club Assistant

Natalie Blais is our new club assistant. A native of upstate New York, she moved to Indiana in 1990, when her father was transferred with General Motors. She and her husband, Scott, have been married for 26 years and have two children. Jaicee, 25, is an elementary school teacher. Tommy, 21, is an electrician who works for his dad. For seven years Natalie served on the Bloomington Blades hockey board. Over a period of eight years she and her husband grew lacrosse in Bloomington from a group of 15 high school boys to close to 100 participants in grades 5-12, including both boys and girls. Natalie and Scott enjoy traveling with their two dogs in their RV to visit family in New York and to catch the Formula 1 races in Austin, Texas.

May 29 PROGRAM: The History of Rotary International

Bryce Bow enthusiastically introduced Owen Johnson, once a radio host for sports news and jazz in eastern Washington and a journalism professor at IU for more than 30 years. Now retired, Owen recently has added Rotary to his research interests, which include Slovakian history and the life and work of World War II war correspondent Ernie Pyle.

Owen said that, although the archives at Rotary International headquarters in Evanston, Ill., contain some history, much more history is preserved by local clubs throughout the world. A book, A Century of Service: The Story of Rotary International, was published to mark RI’s centennial. Owen recently discovered an academic history of service clubs in the United States. But Paul Harris, the founder and organizer of Rotary, said it best: “The story of Rotary will need to be written again and again.”

In 1905, when several men met in Chicago to organize what was to become Rotary, the stated purpose was to get acquainted and perhaps get more business. So that there would be no competition among members, a classification system was devised so that each profession would have only one representative. The idea of Rotary spread west. The next four clubs were in San Francisco, Oakland, Seattle, and Los Angeles. When a club in Winnipeg began in 1910, Rotary became international. The first conference convened in Chicago. Clubs soon followed in Ireland, England, Cuba, and India. In 1922 the name Rotary International was adopted.

Clubs in other countries often do things differently, Owen observed. “Too often we forget our worldwide identity,” Owen said. Many good ideas come from other countries. The first Rotary involvement with the polio campaign, for example, came from a club in Italy.

When the United Nations was chartered in San Francisco in 1945, Owen said, nearly 50 Rotarians were present as delegates, consultants, or advisers. He found this understandable because the aims of Rotary parallel those of the United Nations.

The annual international convention breaks down national borders. Several countries have issued postage stamps when they were hosting the international convention: Austria in 1931, Cuba in 1940, Japan in 1961 and 1978, Brazil in 1981, and Germany in 1987. At least 27 different nations issued stamps to commemorate Rotary’s centennial in 2005.

In 1950 a club in India proposed that membership be opened to women. In 1977 a U.S. club admitted women, leading to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1987 that said Rotary could not exclude women. Three years later there were about 20,000 women members in 33 countries.

When RI met in Salt Lake City in 1919, the hosts dressed in blue coats and white trousers. Perhaps Bloomington can host a RI convention, Owen suggested. We could wear blue coats and red-and-white candy-striped pants.

OUR MAY 29 MEETING

Club Secretary Earon Davis led the meeting. Kim Gray greeted us warmly. Sara Laughlin led the Pledge of Allegiance. She reflected on the change of tense in the Four-Way Test, from “is” in the first two items to “will” in the third and fourth. She conjectured that truth and fairness are timeless and eternal, while “good will and better friendships” and “beneficial to all concerned” are situational. She said the concepts in the Four-Way Test apply in our work today, and many of us rely on it in daily life.

Earon acknowledged a passel of people celebrating membership anniversaries:

Fred Dunn, 45 years

Sally Gaskill, 15 years

Marshall Goss, 31 years

Michael Hoff, 25 years

Ron Jensen, 37 years

Wain Martin, 27 years

Judy Schroeder, 30 years

Winston Shindell, 36 years

Ken Sparks, 56 years

Tim Thrasher, 37 years

Dean Watson, 55 years

Bob Zaltsberg, 30 years

Added together, these Rotarians represent 393 years of membership.

Jean Emery deferred to Henk Haitjema to introduce our only guest: his brother, Aart Haitjema, who spoke to our club in 2010 about water boards in the Netherlands.